The current (Aug. 30) New Yorker has an exposé (sort of) on the Koch brothers. As you’d expect from such a piece, it largely criticises the Kochs for their virtues while giving them a pass for their sins; but anyway, libertarians will find it interesting even though it mostly misses the point.
61 Responses to I’d Like to Buy the World a Koch
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August 30, 2010
[…] debates in the comments section of my Koch post have gotten me thinking about the different ways in which vulgar libertarianism operates. I think […]
I’d heard Koch gave lots of money to the Cato institute, but other than that didn’t know much about him. It’s pretty bizarre when you get to the point that you know something is good by virtue of the fact that the media hates it, and vice versa.
How are these shit heads not vulgar libertarians?
Would the extremely large amounts of money given to the damned Republicans count them in as “vulgar”?
Financial support for Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” gathering, in which white America “reclaims” the civil rights movement, is enough for me. The Koch’s are fucking frauds.
I don’t think there’s any goddam reason to swear about it.
Hasn’t CATO done more hit jobs on Bush than practically any other president? To label the Kooch’s as conservative backers and apologist is a bit of a stretch.
Then how about labeling them ‘vulgar libertarians’?
“Vulgar libertarian” is almost always more accurate as an adjectival phrase than as a noun phrase.
I read in Wittgenstein: Key Concepts that the grammar-police reading is misleading.
Oh, I wasn’t being grammar-police, I was being political-correctness police. 🙂
Ah. Well, the Koch’s vulgar libertarian brand of politics is fucking disgusting. And as of now, we have an entire political party in the United States — the tea party/GOP — that cannot distinguish the vulgar libertarian stance from the actual libertarian stance. And if you let these vulgar libertarian assholes “dismantle” the state as they see fit, then you’ll end up with a pseudo-state even more oppressive and vicious than what we’ve got now. Can’t we at least agree that if we don’t draw a public (MSM-style) distinction between vulgar libertarian dick heads and actual libertarians, that we’ll be in worse shape than if we just hope that the vulgar libertarian fuck-brains will stumble into a free society by accident? Why aren’t there more actual libertarians pleading the case that these vulgar libertarian schmucks are goddamn phonies!?!?!? Can we please get on that after Glenn Beck reclaims the civil rights movement for the whites? Or would that be too “statist”? Gotta’ stay above the fray huh guys? I mean, Judge Napolitano is an anarchist and he works with Glenn Beck. So, it’s gotta be a positive thing for people to hear this message, right? And if we called him out as a phony it would just empower the dems. And statists are statists. So, might as well sit back and watch the fireworks, eh? Vulgar libertarian power is better than no libertarian power!
I have plenty of problems with the Kochs (as I’ve blogged about before). But programs they funded played a crucial role in moving me to anarchism, antimilitarism, and left-libertarianism, as well as making my present academic career possible; and the same is true for many others I know. So I have a hard time seeing their influence as purely “vulgar.”
Well, even Hitler’s influence had some incidental positive aspects. The Kochtopus’ tentacles’ reach is making me nauseous (very literally). Of course, some of their externalities are positive. But what about their direct effect??? How would you see it through a veil of ignorance — positive externalities aside??? And maybe you should watch how Glenn Beck “restores America” before you answer…
You make it sound as though the Kochs’ positive effects have been indirect or unintended; that doesn’t seem right.
I don’t deny that they do plenty of bad stuff too. Those who leap to their defense and those who leap to attack them both seem to be trying to make the world less complicated than it is.
(P.S. – I hope the Kochs’ tentacles aren’t “literally making you nauseous,” because “nauseous” doesn’t mean “feeling like throwing up” (that would be “nauseated”), it means “causing others to feel like throwing up”.)
I thought my charges would make you feel like throwing up. I don’t see how it’s complicated to evaluate the effect of an organization that rates essays by how many times “Hayek”, “Friedman”, and “Rand” show up regardless of the paper’s content. What’s even more uncomplicated is that you, personally, are an exception to the normative product of ihs funding, thankfully. But that’s a testament to you — not them. I don’t doubt that some of their projects are genuinely leftist, but in sum, their scale falls to the right and distinctly away from egalitarianism. Is that not how you see their sum effect?
Thanks, but it’s not like it’s just me. Most libertarian academics have been benefited by them at some point — and quite a few were radicalised thereby.
Impact on social change is hard to quantify (which was precisely what I was criticising the Kochs about earlier). But thanks to Koch money, thousands of students every summer are exposed to libertarian ideas, and while those ideas cover a wide range, the better kinds of libertarian ideas are in the mix. Is that effect outweighed by their more conventional corporatist antics? That’s not obvious.
But thanks to Koch money, thousands of students every summer are exposed to libertarian ideas, and while those ideas cover a wide range, the better kinds of libertarian ideas are in the mix.
That’s fair, but I picture it as a bunch of horse shit with a few golden nuggets dispersed throughout. You’ve got 90 something percent of those academics holding up the shit and declaring it gold. That’s especially a problem when the funders implicitly nod, smile, and clap at those holding up the shit. It’s really hard for me to see how that creates more elucidation than confusion in the long-run. And it makes me seriously doubt elucidation as the actual aim.
That’s a lot better than a few golden nuggets buried deep in rock, which is how nature provides them. A bunch of horse shit with a few golden nuggets dispersed throughout could be quite valuable. 🙂
It seems reasonable to me to suppose that a) the Kochs themselves are confused about the issue (rather than consciously malevolent), but also b) their own economic position encourages them to remain confused.
A bunch of horse shit with a few golden nuggets dispersed throughout could be quite valuable.
True. But they’re only dispersed in horse shit if you’ve put in your time with Wittgensteinian therapy. Otherwise, they’re lodged in rock and your only tool is a plastic spoon.
It seems reasonable to me to suppose that a) the Kochs themselves are confused about the issue (rather than consciously malevolent), but also b) their own economic position encourages them to remain confused.
Yeah, I think that’s dead on. But their good intentions only diffuse my rage down to a calculated anger. That they lack the will to see the world aright is regrettable but understandable. That they’re presumptuous enough to assume they see the world aright, when they most certainly do not, is inexcusable. That they push a doctrine, of which maybe 25% is correct, as if 100% were correct, is repulsive.
So your quarrel is with just about everybody, then.
Plenty of people exhibit epistemic humility — whether they could articulate it as that or not. I think that’s the key to Eudaimonia. If you want to throw in the towel and say it eludes “just about everybody” then fine. It is as you please. But from my experience, even the most hard-headed folk can be shown previously-thought-necessities switch to contingencies through an informal Socratic exchange. And once you show enough previously-thought-necessities switch to contingencies, then the resultant confusion will engender epistemic humility. I don’t hold it against people who haven’t had the opportunity to expose themselves to that process. I hold it against people who have had the opportunity, yet chose to avoid it. The Koch brothers would be an obvious instance.
Everyone is probably wrong about some thing or other they’ve had the opportunity to consider at length. Anyway, I doubt even fascists or primitivists are wrong about 75% of what’s there to be right or wrong about.
Everyone is probably wrong about some thing or other they’ve had the opportunity to consider at length.
That has nothing to do with epistemic humility. Epistemic humility is not whether or not you consider something for a specific length of time. Epistemic humility is an acknowledgment that you might be wrong — an openness to recalibration. Do you think Charles Koch is open to recalibration? Have you read The New Yorker article yet?
“The Kochs have cast themselves as deficit hawks, but, according to a study by Media Matters, their companies have benefitted from nearly a hundred million dollars in government contracts since 2000.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all#ixzz0xot7IrnY
”
So with a 100 billion dollar per year revenue, of ten years, that’s 0.01% of revenue from government benifits.
Actually reading through the article, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that one B5 episode where ISN news does a special on the characters where they distort, smear, and lie the entire segment in hilarious ways. Reading that article is like reading an expose on the “vast libertarian conspiracy” that is soon going to take over America and possibly maybe in some manner cut government spending!
With how lopsided the effect of the Koch empire has been, I only see two possible explanations:
1) on average, their beneficiaries just happen to suck at making an overall case for liberty, and just so happen to be great at making a narrow case for the “liberty” of an institution that has no legitimate reason to exist (the limited liability corporation).
2) the Koch brothers frankly don’t give a fuck about anything beyond their own narrow economic interests, and humbly invite anyone who doesn’t like to suck their kochs.
To be honest, I’d think lower of them if the answer was the first than the 2nd, just off the sheer incompetence of it.
Well, I don’t know that much about Frère David, but from what Frère Charles has explicitly said, I think increased vulgar-libbin’ is in part the result of heightened time-preference as the days dwindle down to a precious few.
“the Koch brothers frankly don’t give a fuck about anything beyond their own narrow economic interests”
Here’s what I don’t understand about this theory: Is it *really* in their narrow economic interests to fund Cato, IHS, etc? Wouldn’t they be better off financially just hiring lots of tax accountants and/or storing their wealth overseas?
Never let mere parsimony interrupt the joyous rapture of speculative psychoanalysis over the internet.
Yeah, I mean, it really is just guess-work when you analyze the right-libertarians. Who knows what they’re really motivated by deep down in their hearts?
Either/or. I think it’s possible that isn’t the case, but functionally it doesn’t matter, the result is the same. The parts where their agenda contradicts itself end up gaining the most influence.
Is it *really* in their narrow economic interests to fund Cato, IHS, etc?
Short-term? No. Long-term? Is it in their narrow economic interest to fund programs and think tanks that advance viral ideas through endless repetition — ideas that translate into votes, votes that translate into policy, and policy that translates into higher profits? Is it a gamble? Sure. But their vision of return on investment is reason enough, for them, to fund those programs and think tanks.
But from Charles Koch’s comments, it seems as though it’s precisely an increased orientation on the short term that’s driving a lot of his recent activism.
But the short term (perceived) benefit is political not economic.
The background switched to yellow & pink. Roderick, did you change it to that or did someone hack into your site?
Neither. Brandon (my web dervish) periodically tweaks the blog’s appearance and experiments with different things, and I assume that’s what he’s doing now.
Maddow has an interview with the author of the Koch piece. Robert LeFevre’s name comes up.
Incidentally, Maddow continues to make passing swipes against anarchism on her show.
That’s because she’s employing “anarchy” in its ordinary sense — alongside chaos. Just like you employ “state” in its ordinary sense — alongside the monopolization of coercion (even though you know there is another sense). How are you not employing a double standard? And don’t you owe Rachel an apology?
The “other” sense, to me at least, sounds like it exists only as a semantics game. Sure, you can take any organizing structure and call it a “state” even though it is voluntary, but who thinks of a government like that? If it doesn’t claim a force monopoly what distinguishes it from anything else?
If it doesn’t claim a force monopoly what distinguishes it from anything else?
That enough people voluntarily fund it.
The definition of a state as a coercive territorial monopoly isn’t something anarchists invented; it’s been the standard sociological definition of the state for the past century. And it is precisely what Maddow is talking about. The fact that she associates absence of a (Weberian) state with chaos doesn’t show that she means chaos by “anarchy”; she pretty clearly means the absence of a Weberian state.
The definition of a state as a coercive territorial monopoly isn’t something anarchists invented[…]
I never say otherwise.
Sure, in the same way that Islamophobes are employing “Islam” in the “ordinary” sense of murderous thugs who stone gays to death and chop defenseless prisoners’ heads off.
Bullshit. That’s not the ordinary sense. That’s some warped sense that happens to be somewhat popular for a temporary period of time in a relatively small region of the world. The way maybe .01% of the world’s population uses a word is by no means “ordinary”.
The problem with Islamophobes isn’t that they use Islam in a non-ordinary sense; they don’t. It’s that they pack lies or errors into it. This is also what Maddow (and to be “fair”, most people who use the term at all) are doing with the term “anarchy” – it doesn’t matter what word they use for the liberty side of the equation and what word they use for the chaos side of the equation, the real error is that they are equating liberty with chaos. People can use “anarchy” to mean chaos all they want; but if they chose to do so they don’t get to thereby categorize self-professed anarchists (or Republicans or minarchists or anyone else) as promoters of anarchy, under that definition of anarchy.
My problem with the word “anarchy” — in the way you mean it — is its political function. As I read THIS, I come to find that the most powerful so-called “anarchists” in the world have a certain way of advancing their corporate interests. It goes like this:
“You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank [like Cato (funded by the Kochs)],” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders [the Kochs].”
You should be feeling a bit uncomfortable by now.
MBH:
“So-called” by whom?
Anyone who advocates tearing government “out at the root” is an anarchist — whether they prefer to be called “autarchist” for politically correct purposes or not.
MBH:
Man, I don’t care what you consider them really to be. When you use the phrase ‘so-called’ and then wrap the following term in quotation marks, that very strongly suggests that you mean to say that somebody actually called them so, in as many words.
If you’re trying to make a point about the public meaning of words like “anarchy” and “anarchist,” then certainly you ought to be able to back up the claim that at least somebody, somewhere calls the Kochs “anarchist” in as many words. If you can’t find any such description, then (1) the Kochs are probably not very good paradigm cases, or particularly important to understanding the public meaning of the terms “anarchy” or “anarchist,” and (2) the Kochs are definitely not ‘so-called “anarchists”.’ Maybe you think they really are anarchists who are not so called; but if so, you ought to think of a better way to express what you mean.
The article says nothing to suggest that either Charles Koch or David Koch considers himself an “autarchist,” or prefers to be called “autarchist.” Do you have any independent data to suggest this is true?
The bit about “autarchism,” in the article, is a brief description of Robert LeFevre’s self-identification. (That’s also the only mention of “anarchism” in the article, as well.) Which shows us that the Kochs hung out with some anarchist libertarians. Which we already could have told you. Later, prior to the big nasty Cato split, they also hung out with Rothbard and Roy Childs, who really were so-called anarchists. Incidentally, LeFevre’s reasons for wanting to be called an “autarchist” were idiosyncratic, not conformist (*), and had nothing in particular to do with “political correctness” in any plausible interpretation of that term. (Roughly, he thought — wrongly — that all Anarchists truly so-called were anti-propertarian and anti-market; and he also thought the term suggested the breakdown of all control, including even self-control, which conflicted with LeFevre’s personal interest in Stoic moral philosophy.)
(*) Just about nobody — not even his own students — followed LeFevre’s usage (Roy Childs, for example, was describing himself as an “anarchist” within about a year), or even took it very seriously.
And just to add: the fact that the Kochs were influenced by LeFevre doen’t show that they accepted his anarchism; being influenced by someone doesn’t mean buying the whole package. (After all, hardly anybody influenced by LeFevre accepted his radical pacifism.)
P.S. – Rothbard briefly had a terminological resistance to “anarchism” ; see pp. 25-32 of this, where Rothbard says: “none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position … even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines. Furthermore, we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists and therefore at opposite poles from our position. We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground and are being completely unhistorical.” (Iain McKay should like that.)
Of course Rothbard changed his mind a few years later.
That’s fine, but it leaves untouched whether or not the majority of “libertarian ideas” are thoughts or mere viral slogans propagated for isolated economic interest. And whether or not those are the ones the Kochs wanted spread. Again,
“You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank [like Cato (funded by the Kochs)],” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders [the Kochs].”
Well, except they don’t.
Well, “coincide perfectly” is a poorly chosen phrase. My main concern is whether or not the majority of “libertarian ideas” are thoughts or mere viral slogans propagated for isolated economic interest. And whether or not those are the ones the Kochs wanted spread.
It is not in any big businessman’s best interest to have to exist under a small, unintrusive state that refuses to intervene on anyone’s economic behalf.
Big businessmen would have to face the inevitability of being driven out of their field by a more efficient upstart competitor. Only through a partnership with a friendly regime could perpetual success be guaranteed.
What is in the Koch brothers’ best interests is to pay all of that protection money to the damned Republicans.
Exactly. Hence, the libertarian/conservative/republican fusionism.
MBH:
As if the arguments of “credible-seeming studies” couldn’t be evaluated on their own merits, independently of information about who funded them.
Can you tell me how this is anything other than a really crude exercise in the circumstantial form of argumentum ad hominem?
Roderick:
Iaian has actually been beating that particular dead horse for over a year now, presumably because he noticed the “non-archist” article when it was first posted at Mises.org. It’s now his critical source for proving that even Murray Rothbard thought that “anarcho”-capitalism was not really anarchist, etc. etc. etc.
(Which is an odd conclusion to draw about a label that wouldn’t be invented for more than a decade after the article was written, and which Rothbard adopted only after having changed his mind about a number of things — including not only the word ‘Anarchism,’ but also his own ideas about revolution, expropriation, actually-existing accumulations of property, and also the merits of the historical Anarchism movement, and the anti-authoritarian Left.)
Enough for what? To keep it going? By that standard, what ISN’T a state?
Whatever doesn’t entail voluntary funding for a militia.